Tragedy Strikes Toulouse

This came off Bill Murphy's paid site. I've talked to Bill in
the past. Bill is leading GATA's fight on gold manipulation by
the Fed and the court case is due to be heard 10/9 This news is
shocking as I've heard nothing on TV or the Net except for this
article. Shows the power of the press in keeping news blacked
out.
September 21 - Gold $290.65 up $4.35 - Silver $4.58 up 8 cents

Toulouse a Disaster Area

A wild day. The US woke up to cratering European bourses and
plunging US stock index futures. At one point around 6 AM EST,
the Dow Jones futures contract was 600 points lower.

The dollar was strengthening, gold was very firm and there was
some mention of a bomb threat at Britain's stock exchange.

Around 9, I received a phone call from a Café member whose
sister lives in Toulouse, France. She told him that there was an
explosion, many were dead, there was a red cloud over this major
city and that all the windows were blown out of all the office
buildings in the town.

I kept waiting to hear about it on CNBC. Nothing. Waited some
more. Nothing. This was most disconcerting to me because the
President of France, Jacque Chirac, had just come back from the
United States after a meeting with President Bush. The obvious
concern was that it was another terrorist attack.

Later on today, I received another call. "Sixty dead and the
damage looked like the World Trade Center." The entire country
of France was transfixed to the television and they equated it
over there to our disaster - not in the number of deaths but to
the scope of the damage. There was also much concern because
Toulouse is the location of the factory that makes the French
Ariane Rockets that are sent skyward in French Guyana.
Chirac was on his way to Toulouse to survey the tragedy, I was
informed.

Obviously, I have no clue whether this was terrorist related,
but it must have shaken the TV networks - as they said nothing
all day - at least while the stock market was open. That is the
equivalent of French Television not reporting on the US
terrorist disasters.

That is why I put out the News Alert.

Meanwhile, the US dollar was going through the roof, but CNBC
never explained the reason why. It was odd for the dollar to be
so strong because our stock market was getting decimated. Of
course, the big shots on Wall Street knew what was going on. It
was only for the public not to know.

The gold traders in London knew. Gold was firmly bid the entire
day over there. The London PM gold fix was $292.50. After that,
the US fix team took over and the cabal made sure that gold
closed lower than the FIX in London, as usual. It is disgusting
how this can go on an on and no one ever says anything but the
GATA camp.

One of your fellow Café members puts it best to sum up the
hushed-up Toulouse nightmare:

This is being described as an "apparent accident". You tell me.
In a city of a million people where you have an apparent
accident in the industrial outskirts of town and officials
blocked off the industrial area just south of Toulouse,
evacuated schools, closed the airport and subway, rerouted
drivers and told people to stay home as a precaution. The city's
streets were virtually deserted in the hours after the
late-morning blast.

That sounds more like a terrorist strike to me. I think Samuel
Huntington is correct: this is a war of civilisations, the West
against Islam. In that situation, Europe is in a far more worse
position than America. Many more Arabs in the population, much
closer proximity to the Middle East, much greater reliance on
Middle Eastern oil. This would also explain why the dollar
rallied sharply this morning against the European currencies.
Safe havens of every kind are being reassessed. Gold might be
the only thing to own right now. There is an emergency EU
meeting tonight; I suspect that this is the subject. 8 suspects
have been arrested today by French police after reports that
they were about to attack American targets in the country this
weekend. (Note - See article below, which is the only news I
have on the French arrests - However this appears to have
nothing to due with Toulouse) The Germans have been rounding up
people as well and are on the look-out for more, since Hamburg
has been a big staging ground for this kind of stuff. In the
short-term this means a much stronger coalition between the
Americans and the Europeans, but it implies a much more broadly
based conflict than perhaps the markets had hitherto suspected.

If this is the case, Europe is much closer to the problem that
the US!

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/

Seven held over Paris embassy attack plot
By Harry de Quetteville in Paris
(Filed: 22/09/2001)
SEVEN suspected Islamic terrorists were arrested in Paris
yesterday. They were thought to be preparing a wave of attacks
on American targets in France, including the US embassy.

Two flats in the suburbs of Paris were stormed by agents from
the French counter-intelligence service, DST. Documents, mobile
phones and a computer were seized.
Two of the suspects are thought to be closely linked to Djamel
Begal, an Algerian who was arrested in July as he prepared to
board a plane at Dubai.

After his arrest, Begal told investigators that he ran three
terrorist cells in Europe belonging to the Tafkir wal Hijra
(Anathema and Exile) group, which is thought to be directed and
financed by Osama bin Laden.

Begal, 35, who was based in Britain and made several journeys to
terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, said the groups were
planning a campaign against American interests in France.

The information he supplied was immediately passed to
investigators in Belgium and Holland, who put several people in
Brussels and Rotterdam under surveillance.

His disclosures also prompted intense security activity in
Paris, where suspects were tracked as they apparently made a
series of reconnaissance trips to potential targets.

The co-ordinated surveillance operation fell apart after last
week's attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

Belgian and Dutch police rushed to arrest the suspects they were
monitoring and recovered 28 fake passports and plans of the
American embassy in Paris.

The arrests were said to have infuriated French anti-terrorist
magistrates who wanted to continue the surveillance operation
and gather further evidence.

Jean-Louis Bruguiere and Jean-Franois Ricard went as far as to
travel to Brussels on Monday to argue for better co-ordination
with their Belgian and Dutch counterparts.

Despite the arrests in Holland and Belgium, M Bruguiere and M
Ricard decided to continue surveillance on the third Tafkir wal
Hijra gang based in Paris.

They were forced to order yesterday's raids after the newspaper
Le Monde published an article revealing the arrest of Begal in
Dubai, which had previously been kept secret. M Bruguiere is in
the United Arab Emirates to question Begal.

One magistrate yesterday described the report as "untimely and
irresponsible" for tipping off the suspects that their
co-ordinator had been captured. According to police, one of
those arrested had packed his bags in preparation to flee the
country.

Begal's links to suspected terrorist gangs in Europe were
further underlined yesterday when it emerged that he had shared
a flat in Paris with Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who was one of
those arrested in Belgium last week.

Police raided the apartment which the men shared two years ago
at 1.30am yesterday, without making any arrests. On Monday,
Trabelsi's Moroccan girlfriend was arrested in Corsica. She was
released on Wednesday.

In recent weeks, investigators around the world have begun to
uncover the extent of Franco-Algerian involvement in Islamic
terror groups.

Key suspects include Zacarias Moussaoui, an Algerian in the
French town of Narbonne, who was detained in Minnesota in
August.

At the time of his arrest he was learning to fly a jumbo jet
but, according to instructors, showed no interest in take-off or
landing procedures.

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